A conference of the world's elites has started under extreme security in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hosted at the Marriott Hotel in Copenhagen, the annual Bilderberg conference brings together some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people along with high-ranking international officials to discuss issues of concern to their interests.

Is Bilderberg a conspiracy? To some degree, of course.

Highlights

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (Catholic Online) - Reporters aren't allowed in and even people seen talking to reporters are asked to leave the area around the Copenhagen Marriott hotel which has been barricaded and taken over by the world's most powerful people.

At the hotel, this gathering of elites will spend the weekend discussing European politics as well as topics such as "does privacy exist?"

Representatives from several states as well as NATO and the IMF are meeting with the rich and powerful to discuss these topics and others including the situation in Ukraine and recent elections in Europe in which conservatives swept to power across the continent amid anti-EU sentiment.

The talks are merely that. No resolutions or recommendations are intended to emerge from the conference, it is simply a period of discussion for the rich and powerful in which information is shared and opinions are discussed.

However, there will be takeaways from these meetings and based on those important decisions will be informed. Those decisions will affect you and me.

The public has an interest in these annual conferences, but the public is not allowed to know precisely what happens within these meetings. This has led to broad speculation and conspiracy theories that these powerful people are actually meeting to plan the next year in world events.

It is highly unlikely that these people, with all their wealth and power, have that kind of influence, however they are certainly influential or else there would be no point in meeting.

The guest list will certainly raise eyebrows. Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) is attending.

Agenda items include such topics as "The new architecture of the Middle East" and "the future of democracy and the middle-class trap," nobody is quite sure what "the trap" refers to.

Outside of the hotel, a public protest area has been established to corral protesters that show up to the annual conference. They won't be disturbing anything although they may get a share of the media spotlight since the media has nothing else to work with.

The security presence around the hotel is tight and vendors up to several blocks away have been warned to report "suspicious persons."

The real question isn't what terrorists could inflict damage on downtown Copenhagen, but instead what damage the elites, safe in downtown Copenhagen, might inflict upon the world.